The Monthly Adventures #017 - "Sword of Orion" by Nicholas Briggs

Nicholas Briggs seems to have a brand of story. Good ideas using established things from the show (Gallifrey, Daleks, Cybermen) and then writing a story void of any substance to include these ideas. There is so unbelievably little in Sword of Orion to talk about it’s genuinely impressive. I am surprised this story lasts two hours. It is fine, I don’t dislike pretty much anything here, but I also do not care about one bit of it. Not sure what I can talk about, let’s just get into it.

Exploring the grungier side of space travel, the Doctor and Charley are pulled into a fated expedition into a derelict, where the remnants of a far off war and an old enemy prepare to collide.

(CONTAINS SPOILERS)

This is going to be a really short one, so we’ll just begin. Nicholas Briggs is a writer whose actual writing, what’s physically on the page, is fine. The narrative is simple but works (most of the time), the dialogue sounds genuine, the characters are believable, his stories just lack substance. The one thing he seems to truly excel at is worldbuilding, his worlds all feel vast and real and it is easily my favourite thing about Sword of Orion. In the first part, we get a small section of Eight and Charley exploring a futuristic bazaar and it’s by far the best sequence. The sounds, the characters, the places we go to, the ideas we come across. It’s a world I can get invested in and once we get on the ship where we spend a majority of our time, we’re still getting bits and pieces of lore, like the war between Androids and Humans that incites the whole plot. It’s most interesting when it’s feeding us bits and pieces through characters like undercover-android Deeva, who I will mention as being the only interesting member of the cast. Usually I don’t just highlight one character but she is literally the only one I can remember the name of.

And that’s not a joke, there are about five more characters filling out the side cast, I am convinced they are all just the same person. I think one was called Ike, not sure about the rest. The elephant in the room I do have to mention is that this is the Cybermen’s first appearance in the Main Range. They do nothing. Absolutely nothing, they wander around a ship for four parts as the plot goes on around them. A lot more could’ve been done with them for their debut and we’ll have to wait until Spare Parts for a better story. Other than that, I really don’t know what to say. There have been a few stories like this, such as The Mutant Phase - also by Briggs - that just feel devoid of substance. There is nothing in the story I frankly want to talk about, it’s all fine or forgettable. And I can’t even bash that, I enjoyed it, simply because there was nothing for me to like or dislike.

Sword of Orion was about as fine as a story can get. Creating a pros and cons list for something like this story is especially hard because every element I’d usually highlight’s just in the middle somewhere. I can’t rate it that low because I didn’t dislike listening to it, but definitely not something you’d regret skipping.

5/10

Pros:

+ Great worldbuilding, loved the glimpses of future society

+ Deeva stood out as the one interesting member of the side cast

Cons:

- Sidecast made almost entirely of near identical characters

- The Cybermen are underutilised and a non-entity

- Void of any substance